VM performance expectations

[Sptz]

Hi all,

 

I'm very much almost decided in diving into the unraid world and doing my first build specifically for it. Now, the absolute main usage will be both VMs (MacOS, Linux, Win10, but only two of them would be up at the same time ever), Plex server (always direct-play to TV) and random storage.

 

My plan is to use some absolute cheapo Chromebooks for example, as they're usually the cheapest compared to Win-loaded laptops such as the following or something similar to keep it low-powered/lightweight:

 

ASUS C423 14 Inch Celeron 4GB 32GB Chromebook - £220

 

Now, my main point of concern is the VM experience. I've read accounts of people using ParSec and having an excellent experience as it's got incredibly low latency, as well as Splashtop. This is where I need to be brought down to earth on. I work remotely every week and the experience is absolutely great, it feels almost bare metal, so I'd expect the same here, and even better experience. Now, the question is if the setup below would provide such an experience. Say, with each VM having 2 cores assigned and one SSD passed-through to each.

 

The following build would have a second GPU, I'm still debating in discarding the GTX 1650 and going for two 750s or 1050s as there will be absolutely zero gaming, just a lot of Photoshop work and coding. No media consumption whatsoever, only the regular web browsing / Youtube or whatever. 

 

Final pricing will most likely be lower as I'll be purchasing some components second hand. I'm still undecided whether to go ECC or not. I can get Hynix 32GB DDR4 2400 at around £80 on Ebay, hence my choice of motherboard as I ASRock supports ECC in case I'd decide to go that route. Would ECC be better to go with even though it's 600mhz slower than the pair listed below?

 

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700 3.2 GHz 8-Core Processor  (£129.00 @ Amazon UK) 
Motherboard: ASRock B450M PRO4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  (£66.53 @ Amazon UK) 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  (£125.58 @ Aria PC) 
Storage: SanDisk SSD PLUS 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£29.29 @ Amazon UK) - Passed-through to VM1
Storage: SanDisk SSD PLUS 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£29.29 @ Amazon UK)  - Passed-through to VM2
Storage: Kingston A400 240 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive  (£33.91 @ CCL Computers) - Cache
Storage: Seagate IronWolf NAS 6 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£149.97 @ Amazon UK) 
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6 GB ARMOR OC Video Card  (£115.00) 
Case: BitFenix Phenom M Midnight Black MicroATX Mini Tower Case  (£73.99 @ CCL Computers) 
Power Supply: Corsair Vengeance 650 W 80+ Silver Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply  (£65.99 @ AWD-IT) 
Total: £818.55

 

I'm just wondering if I'm making a bad mistake and should just invest in better laptops and just one big external HDD and use that as DLNA (forgoing then the Plex experience), though then my girlfriend would also have to discard experiencing MacOS as that's what she's more comfortable with and just settle with a crappy low-powered laptop.

 

Going for the unraid option is attractive to me as I love building and tweaking/tinkering with computers etc so it'd be a pretty cool project that could certainly be eye-opening.
 

[testdasi]

I believe for Catalina you have to use an AMD GPU (or at least have to go through hoops to get Nvidia to work) and AMD GPU has reset issues so keep that in mind. Your path to having a Hackintosh VM experience will be a tough one.

 

You should get a Gigabyte motherboard to give yourself flexibility to pick PCIe slots for your boot GPUs (having 2 GPUs will make your life much easier) i.e. what Unraid boots with.

 

No need ECC RAM. ECC for what you are doing is pointless.

Having said that, you should not overclock RAM. You can buy overclocked RAM but you should be running on stock speed (e.g. 2133MHz typically for DDR4). Overclocking RAM, even with "certified" stable settings e.g. XMP has been known to cause weird issues.

 

 

[Sptz]

I could definitely get an AMD GPU as well but from what I can see here: https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/b91vf5/mojave_gpu_buyers_guide/

 

It looks like some Nvidia GPUs are natively supported in Mojave/Catalina such as Kepler gen. (730, 760 etc) I think this would translate to here as well right?

 

Regarding the Gigabyte mobo I guess, yes, I could go for it. I just read that the ASRock I chose, in general, is better and I've also read quite a bit that passing through the GPU that Unraid boots with is pretty straight forward nowadays (I'd be managing Unraid 99.9% of the time from the Web GUI, so having local video output isn't necessary), am I being naive here?

 

Thanks again for your prompt response.

[testdasi]

Just now, Sptz said:

I could definitely get an AMD GPU as well but from what I can see here: https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/b91vf5/mojave_gpu_buyers_guide/

 

It looks like some Nvidia GPUs are natively supported in Mojave/Catalina such as Kepler gen. (730, 760 etc) I think this would translate to here as well right?

 

Regarding the Gigabyte mobo I guess, yes, I could go for it. I just read that the ASRock I chose, in general, is better and I've also read quite a bit that passing through the GPU that Unraid boots with is pretty straight forward nowadays (I'd be managing Unraid 99.9% of the time from the Web GUI, so having local video output isn't necessary), am I being naive here?

 

Thanks again for your prompt response.

FWIW, I could not make my GT 710 to work at all with Catalina VM despite following all the guides.

 

 

With regards to pass through, the key is to have 2 GPU's. That makes life a lot easier (e.g. to dump vbios).

Passing through the only GPU would not be in the "straight-forward" category.

 

The flexibility I'm talking about is, let's say, you need an AMD GPU for the MacOS VM but it has reset issue i.e. if Unraid boots with it, it would refuse to be passed through to the VM. And let's say you have a case space restriction preventing you from putting the AMD GPU on the 2nd PCIe slot.

• With non-Gigabyte motherboard, the AMD GPU has to be on the 2nd PCIe slot. And in this scenario, it would make it very difficult, if at all possible, to proceed.
• With Gigabyte motherboard, you can put it on the 1st PCIe slot and boot Unraid to a conforming 2nd GPU on the 2nd PCIe slot. Problem solved.

Flexibility is like insurance. You won't appreciate how important it is until you need it.

 

Most (if not all) motherboard reviews and recommendations are based on bare metal scenarios (as well as overclocking).

Very few of them (if any at all) pay any attention to the impact of some "meh" features (such as the ability to pick initial display output in the BIOS) to a niche use case such as Unraid.

[Sptz]

3 hours ago, testdasi said:

FWIW, I could not make my GT 710 to work at all with Catalina VM despite following all the guides.

 

 

With regards to pass through, the key is to have 2 GPU's. That makes life a lot easier (e.g. to dump vbios).

Passing through the only GPU would not be in the "straight-forward" category.

 

The flexibility I'm talking about is, let's say, you need an AMD GPU for the MacOS VM but it has reset issue i.e. if Unraid boots with it, it would refuse to be passed through to the VM. And let's say you have a case space restriction preventing you from putting the AMD GPU on the 2nd PCIe slot.

• With non-Gigabyte motherboard, the AMD GPU has to be on the 2nd PCIe slot. And in this scenario, it would make it very difficult, if at all possible, to proceed.
• With Gigabyte motherboard, you can put it on the 1st PCIe slot and boot Unraid to a conforming 2nd GPU on the 2nd PCIe slot. Problem solved.

Flexibility is like insurance. You won't appreciate how important it is until you need it.

 

Most (if not all) motherboard reviews and recommendations are based on bare metal scenarios (as well as overclocking).

Very few of them (if any at all) pay any attention to the impact of some "meh" features (such as the ability to pick initial display output in the BIOS) to a niche use case such as Unraid.

 

Everything you've said makes absolute sense. Thank you. 

 

Have you, personally, tried a OSX VM with Unraid?

Ah, another question. The AMD Reset Bug only happens when the VM is force stopped correct? Or is it a random occurrence?

Edited January 30, 2020 by Sptz

[testdasi]

5 hours ago, Sptz said:

Have you, personally, tried a OSX VM with Unraid?

Ah, another question. The AMD Reset Bug only happens when the VM is force stopped correct? Or is it a random occurrence?

Yes, I managed to get Mojave to work after several days of tinkering but it was more of a novelty thing. I went back to Windows and Ubuntu after a few months.

I know many forum members managed to make it work with Catalina so if you ask them (look for the SpaceInvader One topic about Macinabox), they should be of more help.

 

Reset bug happens even if you restart the VM (or gracefully shut it down). There are ways / custom kernels to sort of mitigate it but they are not reliable.